Exaggerating, manipulating and exploiting the Terrorist threat for profit and power has been the biggest scam of the decade; only Wall Street’s ability to make the Government prop it up and profit from the crisis it created at the expense of everyone else can compete for that title. Nothing has altered the mindset of the American citizenry more than a decade’s worth of fear-mongering So compelling is fear-based propaganda, so beholden are our government institutions to these private Security State factions, and so unaccountable is the power bestowed by these programs, that even a full decade after the only Terrorist attacks on U.S. soil, its growth continues more or less unabated.

“During the past 10 years I have not met a single individual who, after doing research on the subjectpen, switched from questioning the official narrative of the events of 9/11/2001 to believing the official narrative of those events.. It is always the other way around. Why do you think that is? There are good reasons for this, and I will try to explain this phenomenon right now.”

The official version of the events of 9/11 are deemed written in stone according to a new 5-page House Resolution (pdf) which was passed to Never Forget 9/11. The intention is great, in theory . . . the facts completely warped.

While I have no direct evidence that the COG is still in effect, the fact that key players have said that the measures would be permanent, the continuous exaggeration by the administration of major terrorist threats, and the circumstantial evidence that the COG measures are still in effect all argue for their continued existence.

This is not a new structural problem in journalism or politics. It can make it hard for many to argue against the jibe that they have “nothing to hide”. This is never true, of course, but it leads an informed audience away from the central harm, which is that it is the existence of uncontrolled surveillance and (critically) the power to act on its results, that causes harm to society.This is the “chilling effect”. Fear, no more and no less.

Enhanced fear has now been common currency for a decade. It could be why – following Winston Smith, the central character of 1984 – that since 9/11 we may all be headed to a time why we don’t understand anymore why privacy matters.

At the core of the 9/11 Truther movement is the idea that the government staged the attacks to drum up support for a war. So much Truther evidence is laughable that it’s easy to dismiss the idea, but there exists a chilling reminder that the U.S. military was once all-too-willing to deceive and attack its own citizens for political reasons. That was the goal of Operation Northwoods.

“If this sounds vaguely familiar, it’s because such sting operations are a fixture in the headlines. Remember the Washington Metro bombing plot? The New York subway plot? The guys who planned to blow up the Sears Tower? The teenager seeking to bomb a Portland Christmas tree lighting? Each of those plots, and dozens more across the nation, was led by an FBI asset.”

“Senior Pentagon officials scrubbed key details about a top-secret military intelligence unit’s efforts in tracking Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda from official reports they prepared for a Congressional committee probing the 9/11 terrorist attacks, new documents obtained by Truthout reveal.

Moreover, in what appears to be an attempt to cover up the military unit’s intelligence work on al-Qaeda and Bin Laden prior to 9/11, a September 2008 Defense Department (DoD) Inspector General’s (IG) report that probed complaints lodged by the former deputy chief of the military unit in question, the Asymmetrical Threats Division of Joint Forces Intelligence Command (JFIC), also known as DO5, about the crucial information withheld from Congress, claimed “the tracking of Usama Bin Ladin did not fall within JFIC’s mission.””

“Floyd Rudmin, with the University of Tromso, says those labelled “conspiracy theorists” with regard to 9/11, the John F. Kennedy assassination or any number of other dramatic events have good reason to doubt the explanations given to the public by authorities.”

(…)

“Rudmin notes that many of the organizations of people who question what happened on Sept. 11, 2001, are experts in architecture, aviation and military. “These are not wackos. These are professional people.”

”We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality.” Andwhile you’re studying that reality-ju­diciously, as you will- we’ll actagain, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors… and you, all of you, will be left to study what we do.”— Karl Rove

It is in times like these that a line is drawn between critical thinkers
and those who get swiped by media crap-storms; Between those who
understand the complexity of a situation and those who’d rather not
know; Between those who comprehend the underlying motives of the elite and those who go outside chanting “USA! USA!”.(…)We’re living in an era of artificial, fully staged, media-generated events.Why was Bin Laden’s death announced on the evening of May 1st? Because it was the required sacrifice of the “most magical time of the year”, which was launched with the Royal Wedding.

The US government that told us that Saddam Hussein had “weapons of mass destruction” and “al Qaeda connections” and that Iran has nuclear missiles that require the US to ring Russia with anti-ballistic missile
systems, finally told us the truth for once.
Obama found Osama and had him murdered, apparently unarmed in his underwear, defended not by al Qaeda, “the best trained, most dangerous vicious killers on the planet,” but by two unarmed women.

As I offered previously, if you believe this, I have a bridge in Brooklyn that I can let you have for a cheap price.

“Islamic law traditionally allows disposing of a corpse at sea only if the person dies on board ship and there is no possibility of getting the body to dry land before it decomposes,” Marion Katz, professor of Islamic law, gender and ritual at New York University, told Al Jazeera.

First, up until mid-December 13, 2001, the CIA had regularly been intercepting messages between bin Laden and his people. At that time, however, the messages suddenly stopped, and the CIA has never again intercepted a message.

Second, on December 26, 2001, a leading Pakistani newspaper published a story reporting that bin Laden had died in mid-December, adding: “A prominent official in the Afghan Taleban movement . . . stated . . . that he had himself attended the funeral of bin Laden and saw his face prior to burial.”

Third, bin Laden had kidney disease. He had been treated for it in the American Hospital in Dubai in July 2001, at which time he reportedly ordered two dialysis machines to take home. If you have ever wondered what bin Laden was doing the night before the 9/11 attacks, CBS News reported that he was being given kidney dialysis treatment in a hospital in Pakistan. And in January of 2001, Dr. Sanjay Gupta said – based on a video of bin Laden that had been made in either late November or early December of 2001 – that
he appeared to be in the last stages of kidney failure.

“It’s great news, if that’s true,” Khrushchev said referring to the news of the assassination of Osama Bin Laden. “But
it looks like a [highly] staged fairytale, first. And secondly, the United States hasn’t proved that the White House has iron-clad, video-taped evidence regarding the operation and how his body was
transferred to land-locked Afghanistan later, to be dumped at sea, with all those honors… [It] doesn’t make any sense for me.”(…)“That was not the reason,” Khrushchev said. “He was supposed to be brought for forensic [examination] back to the United States, because he was the main target of the ten-year-long
manhunt.”

“His name is Akhbar Khan (Han), He owns the house……I know him very well” says his neighbor.
Only 1 in 50 locals questioned believe Bin Laden was really killed in
that house. Obama staged this whole scam with the Patreaus Panetta
Pakistani Pentagon CIA, that has been supplying the “Taliban” so the
Pentagon can run a fake war to keep rebuilding Afghaniistan for Hillary
Clinton and the CIA. The fake Nobel Peace Prize winner is really the
worlds greatest psychopathic liar covert warlord. His approval rating
is up, sheep. 9/11 was an inside job, and Obama is still doing it.
Source: Osama Bin Laden: Pakistan’s scepticism over videos (BBC)

The current war in Afghanistan is increasingly presented as a war for the human rights of the Afghan people, to liberate them from their oppressive Taliban rulers. The Taliban’s severely regressive policies toward women have received particular attention, with even First Lady Laura Bush issuing condemnations of this repression. And the press has overwhelmingly followed suit, portraying the war as an ideological struggle against the evils of Islamic extremism.

But the U.S. government and the American press have not always opposed Afghan extremists. During the 1980s, the Mujahiddin guerrilla groups battling Soviet occupation had key features in common with the Taliban.
In many ways, the Mujahiddin groups acted as an incubator for the
later rise of the Taliban in the 1990s.

(CNN) — Speculation about the whereabouts and health of Osama bin Laden picked up over the weekend when Pakistan’s president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, said he thought bin Laden had likely died of kidney failure.

In 2002, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf said bin Laden had kidney disease, and that he had required a dialysis machine when he lived in Afghanistan. That same year, the FBI’s top counterterrorism official, Dale Watson, said, “I personally think he is probably not with us anymore.(…)Now the CIA has produced a report saying that bin Laden has long-term kidney disease and may have only months to live, two U.S. officials familiar with the report told TIME. The agency ostensibly managed to get the names of some of the medications bin Laden is taking. One U.S. official familiar with the report, which came out between six and nine months ago, says it concluded, “Based
on his current pharmaceutical intake, [we] would expect that he has no more than six to 18 months to live and impending kidney failure.”

We went from armed Bin Laden using his wife as a shield to armed Bin Laden using an anonymous woman as a shield, to unarmed Bin Laden using some kind of a woman as a shield, and now, unarmed Bin Laden in pajamas using
no one as a shield!(…)

But last night, the White House said Bin Laden was not armed when a U.S. Navy SEAL confronted and killed him during Sunday night’s assault on his compound.…

Security officials said they did not recover any arms and explosives during their detailed search of the compound and the 13-roomed house, during which they removed two buffalos, a cow and around 150 chickens.

Leon Panetta, director of the CIA, revealed there was a 25 minute blackout during which the live feed from cameras mounted on the helmets of the US special forces was cut off.

A photograph released by the White House appeared to show President
Barack Obama and his aides in the situation room watching the action as
it unfolded.In fact they had little knowledge of what was happening in the compound.

Osama bin Laden’s house, described by the US government as a $1m (£605,000) mansion, is in fact worth no more than $250,000 say property professionals in Abbottabad, the town where he was killed. The revelation is the latest of several erroneous descriptions about the nature of Bin Laden’s hideout – and the manner of his death – which have dogged the White House in recent days.
(…)
Asked about the American estimate, he chuckled. “Maybe that’s the assessment from a satellite. But here on the ground, that’s the price.”

In fact, most of the operation was spent in what the military calls “exploiting the site,” gathering up the computers, hard drives, cellphones and files that could provide valuable intelligence on al-Qaida operatives and potential operations worldwide.

The only problem with the official account is that it was untrue.In fact, Lynch’s gun jammed and she did not fire a shot; Iraqi hospital staff treated her kindly and tried to return her to US forces; and, there was no need for a raid by army rangers and navy seals as the Iraqi military had fled the day before. Nor, contrary to initial reports, had
she been shot or stabbed – her injuries had been caused after her truck was hit and crashed.
(…)
In 2002, moved by the devastation of 9/11, Pat Tillman gave up a lucrative career in American football to enlist in the US army.

Despite the initial suggestion that he died “in the line of devastating enemy fire”, he was killed by his own side. His family was not told the truth about how he died until five weeks after his memorial service was broadcast on national TV.

In a biography published two years ago, it was claimed Tillman regarded his president as a cowboy who had led the country into an illegal and unjust war in Iraq. Tillman had noted in his diary his suspicion that the rescue of Jessica Lynch was “a media blitz”.

(…)

Until the killing of the al-Qaida chief, the most recent inaccurate account of a high-profile incident came last October, with the botched mission to free the kidnapped British aid
worker Linda Norgrove.

Members of Seal Team 6 – the special forces unit that killed Bin Laden – were sent to rescue Norgrove from eastern Afghanistan but one of them accidentally killed her by throwing a fragmentation grenade close to where she was sheltering.

He also dined at the Pentagon, according to documents obtained by Fox News. “The Pentagon has offered no explanation of how a man, now on the CIA kills or capture list, ended up at a special lunch for Muslim outreach,” a flummoxed Fox News reported.

“Awlaki was vetted before he was invited to attend a luncheon at the Pentagon in the secretary of the Army’s Office of Government Counsel. His appearance at the meeting was deliberately engineered despite Awlaki’s ties to three of the alleged 9/11 hijackers – Nawaf al-Hazmi, Khalid al-Mihdhar and Hani Hanjour – who were identified as the suicide pilots that slammed Flight 77 into the Pentagon,”Paul Joseph Watson wrote on October 21, 2010.

“Given the fact that Awlaki is a double operative, claiming to be an Al-Qaeda
leader yet in fact working for U.S. intelligence, it’s hardly surprising that he made an appearance at the Pentagon.”

Brzezinski: Yes.
According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujahadeen began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, 24 Dec 1979. But the
reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise: Indeed, it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention.

Q: Despite this risk, you were an advocate of this covert action. But perhaps you yourself desired this Soviet entry into war and looked to provoke it?
Brzezinski: It isn’t quite that. We didn’t push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would.

BBC’s killer documentary called “The Power of Nightmares“. Top CIA officials openly admit, Al-qaeda is a total and complete fabrication, never having existed at any time. The Bush
administration needed a reason that complied with the Laws so they could go after “the bad guy of their choice” namely laws that had been set in place to protect us from mobs and “criminal organizations” such as the Mafia. They paid Jamal al
Fadl, hundreds of thousands of dollars to back the U.S. Government’s story of Al-qaeda, a “group” or criminal organization they could “legally” go after.

The Maktab al-Khidamat, also Maktab Khadamāt al-Mujāhidīn al-‘Arab, also known as the Afghan Services Bureau, is reliably[citation needed] believed to have been founded in 1984 by Abdullah Azzam and Osama bin Laden to raise funds and recruit foreign mujahidin for the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan. MAK became the forerunner to al-Qaeda and was instrumental in creating the fundraising and recruitment network that benefited al-Qaeda during the 1990s.(…)MAK established recruitment and fundraising offices in many Western countries, the United States being one of their main fund-raising destinations. The first offices in the United States were established within the Al Kifah Refugee Center in Brooklyn, and at the Islamic Center in Tucson, Arizona. On his fundraising tours Sheikh Abdullah Azzam visited the mosques of “Brooklyn, St. Louis, Kansas City, Seattle, Sacramento, Los Angeles, and San Diego – altogether there were 33 cities in America that opened branches of bin Laden and Azzam’s organization, the Services Bureau, in order to support the jihad.”

Shortly before his untimely death, former British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook told the House of Commons that “Al Qaeda” is not really a terrorist group but a database of international mujaheddin and arms smugglers used
by the CIA and Saudis to funnel guerrillas, arms, and money into Soviet-occupied Afghanistan.
(…)In Arabic, the files were called, ‘Q eidat il-Maaloomaat’ and ‘Q eidat i-Taaleemaat.’ Those two files were kept in one file called in Arabic ‘Q eidat ilmu’ti’aat’ which is the exact translation of the English word database. But the Arabs commonly used the short word Al Qaida which is the Arabic word for “base.” The military air base of Riyadh, Saudi Arabia is called ‘q eidat ‘riyadh al ‘askariya.’ Q eida means “a base” and “Al Qaida” means “the base.”

“In the mid-1980s, Al Qaida was a database located in computer and dedicated to the communications of the Islamic Conference’s secretariat.

(…)

In yet another example of what happens to those who challenge the system, in December 2001, Maj. Pierre-Henri Bunel was convicted by a secret French military court of passing classified documents that identified potential NATO bombing targets in Serbia to a Serbian agent during the Kosovo war in 1998. Bunel’s case was transferred from a civilian court to keep the details of the case classified. Bunel’s character witnesses and psychologists notwithstanding, the system “got him” for telling the truth about Al Qaeda and who has actually been behind the terrorist attacks commonly blamed on that group. It is noteworthy that that Yugoslav government, the government with whom Bunel was asserted by the French government to have shared information, claimed that Albanian and Bosnian guerrillas in the Balkans were being backed by elements of “Al Qaeda.”We now know that these guerrillas were being backed by money provided by the Bosnian Defense Fund, an entity established as a special fund at
Bush-influenced Riggs Bank and directed by Richard Perle and Douglas Feith.

Bin Laden was, though, a product of a monumental miscalculation by western security agencies.Throughout
the 80s he was armed by the CIA and funded by the Saudis to wage jihad against the Russian occupation of Afghanistan. Al-Qaida, literally “the database”, was originally the computer file of the thousands of mujahideen who were recruited and trained with help from the CIA to defeat the Russians. Inexplicably, and with disastrous consequences, it never appears to have occurred to Washington that once Russia was out of the way, Bin Laden’s organisation would turn its attention to the west.

Once upon a time, the CIA trained, financed and supported Osama bin Laden and his mujahidin networks in Afghanistan to repel the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. After the end of the Cold War, bin Laden turned against the West and we no longer had any use for him. His persistent terrorist attacks against us for more than a decade, culminating in 9/11, provoked our own response, in the form of the ‘War on Terror’. This is the official narrative. And it’s false.Not only did Western intelligence services continue to foster Islamist extremist and terrorist groups connected to al-Qaeda after the Cold War; they continued to do so even after 9/11.

In March 2002, authorities in Bosnia, Sarajevo, will raid the offices of the Benevolence International Foundation (BIF) due to suspected funding of al-Qaeda (see March 2002). The raid will uncover a handwritten list containing the name of twenty wealthy donors sympathetic to al-Qaeda.The
list, referred to as “The Golden Chain,” contains both the names of
the donors and the names of the recipients (but does not mention amounts given). Seven of the payments are made to Osama bin Laden.

One need only review the role played by al-Qaeda in the Balkans during the 1990s when the United States and their NATO allies, particularly Germany and the United Kingdom, provided entrée to demobilized Afghan-Arab mujahedin fighters as the West dismembered the Socialist
Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, culminating in 1999 with NATO’s murderous 78-day bombing campaign of Serbia to “liberate” Kosovo.

Earlier in the decade, thousands of Islamist fighters flooded
Bosnia-Herzegovina, directly recruited by former Waffen SS Handzar Division foot soldier and Islamist ideologue, Alia Izetbegovic, the President of Bosnia and darling of liberal interventionists such as Bernard-Henri Lévy. In calling for Western intervention, Lévy shamelessly described Izetbegovic’s neofascist statelet as an exemplar of “modern, secular Islam”! Quite naturally, Izetbegovic’s Nazi past was covered-up by Western interventionists intent on smashing multiethnic Yugoslavia into smithereens.

Indeed, intelligence analyst and senior lecturer at the University of
Amsterdam, Cees Wiebes, documents in Intelligence and the War in Bosnia 1992-1995, how Western intelligence agencies, including the CIA, MI6 and BND assisted major arms transshipments into Bosnia despite a UN arms embargo, often in concert with the reactionary Iranian regime.

Some estimates claim that by 1994, as many as 4,000 mujahedin fighters were present in Bosnia. Indeed, none other than Osama bin Laden himself visited Izetbegovic in Sarajevo.As a gesture of appreciation for his support, Izetbegovic gave bin Laden a Bosnian passport.And, a November 1, 2001 account in the European edition of The Wall Street Journal claimed that bin Laden continued to visit the Balkan region as late as 1996.

By 1995 as Wiebes documented, American Hercules C-130 transport planes accompanied by jet fighters began landing at the Tuzla Air Base in eastern Bosnia laden with arms, ammunition and communications equipment destined for Izetbegovic’s Islamist brigades. Similar arms pipelines were opened between Albania, Bosnia, Croatia and later in the decade Kosovo, where Albanian narcotrafficking networks rule the roost and continue to wreck havoc across the region.

Kosovo’s prime minister is the head of a “mafia-like” Albanian group responsible for smuggling weapons, drugs and human organs through eastern Europe, according to a Council of Europe inquiry report on organised crime.

Hashim Thaçi is identified as the boss of a network that began operating
criminal rackets in the runup to the 1998-99 Kosovo war, and has held
powerful sway over the country’s government since.

The report of the two-year inquiry, which cites FBI and other intelligence sources, has been obtained by the Guardian. It names Thaçi as having over the last decade exerted “violent control” over the heroin trade. Figures from Thaçi’s inner circle are also accused of taking captives across the
border into Albania after the war, where a number of Serbs are said to
have been murdered for their kidneys, which were sold on the black
market.

Usama Bin Laden is wanted in connection with the August 7, 1998, bombings of the United States Embassies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and Nairobi, Kenya. These attacks killed over 200 people. In addition, Bin Laden is a suspect in other terrorist attacks throughout the world.

On June 5, 2006, the Muckraker Report contacted the FBI Headquarters, (202) 324-3000, to learn why Bin Laden’s Most Wanted poster did not indicate that Usama was also wanted in connection with 9/11. The Muckraker Report spoke with Rex Tomb, Chief of Investigative Publicity for the FBI. When asked why there is no mention of 9/11 on Bin Laden’s Most Wanted web page, Tomb said, “The reason why 9/11 is not mentioned on Usama Bin Laden’s Most Wanted page is because the FBI has no hard evidence connecting Bin Laden to 9/11.”

Surprised by the ease in which this FBI spokesman made such an astonishing
statement, I asked, “How this was possible?” Tomb continued, “Bin Laden has not been formally charged in connection to 9/11.” I asked, “How does that work?” Tomb continued, “The FBI gathers evidence. Once evidence is gathered, it is turned over to the Department of Justice. The Department of Justice than decides whether it has enough evidence to present to a federal grand jury. In the case of the 1998 United States Embassies being bombed, Bin Laden has been formally indicted and charged by a grand jury. He has not been
formally indicted and charged in connection with 9/11 because the FBI has no hard evidence connected Bin Laden to 9/11.”

The idea that Osama bin Laden was responsible for the 9/11 attacks has been an article of faith for public officials and the mainstream media. Calling it an “article of faith” points to two features of this idea. On the one hand, no one in these circles publicly challenges this idea.

On the other hand, as I pointed out at length in two of my books – 9/11 Contradictions1 and The New Pearl Harbor Revisited,2 no good evidence has ever been publicly presented to support it.

Colin Powell’s Withdrawn Promise Two weeks after 9/11, Secretary of State Colin Powell, speaking to Tim Russert on Meet the Press, said that he expected “in the near future . . . to put out . . . a document that will describe quite clearly the evidence that we have linking [bin Laden] to this attack.”

Powell reversed himself, however, at a press conference with President Bush in the White House Rose Garden the next morning, saying that, although the government had information that left no question of bin Laden’s responsibility, “most of it is classified.”4 According to Seymour Hersh, citing officials from both the CIA and the Department of Justice, the real reason for
the reversal was a “lack of solid information.”

This was the week that Bush, after demanding that the Taliban turn over bin Laden, refused their request for evidence that bin Laden had been behind the attacks.6 A senior Taliban official, after the US attack on Afghanistan had begun, said: “We have asked for proof of Osama’s involvement, but they have refused. Why?”7 Hersh’s answer was that they had no proof.
(…)
Blair’s report, however, began by saying: “This document does not purport to provide a prosecutable case against Osama Bin Laden in a court of law.”Although the case was not good enough to go to court, Blair seemed to be saying, it was good enough to go to war.

The weakness in Blair’s report, in any event, was noted the next day by the BBC, which said: “There is no direct evidence in the public domain linking Osama Bin Laden to the 11 September attacks. At best the evidence is circumstantial.”

We bring to the attention of our readers the following text of Osama bin
Laden’s interview with Ummat, a Pakistani daily, published in Karachi on September 28, 2001. It was translated into English by the BBC World Monitoring Service and made public on September 29, 2001.The authenticity of this interview, which is available in recognized electronic news archives, is confirmed.Osama bin Laden categorically denies his involvement in the 9/11 attacks.Bin Laden’s statements in this interview are markedly different from those made in the alleged Osama video tapes.In this interview, Osama bin Laden exhibits an understanding of US foreign policy. He expresses his views regarding the loss of life on 9/11. He also makes statements as to who, in his opinion, might be the likely
perpetrator of the September 11 attacks.This is an important text which has not been brought to the attention of Western public opinion.(…)I have already said that I am not involved in the 11 September attacks in the United States.
As a Muslim, I try my best to avoid telling a lie. I had no knowledge of these attacks, nor do I consider the killing of innocent women, children, and other humans as an appreciable act.Islam strictly forbids causing harm to innocent women, children, and other people.(…)Whoever committed the act of 11 September are not the friends of the American people. I have already said that we are against the American system, not against its people, whereas in these attacks, the common American people have been killed.

According to my information, the death toll is much higher than what the US government has stated. But the Bush administration does not want the panic to spread. The United States should try to trace the perpetrators of these attacks within itself; the people who are a part of the US system, but are dissenting against it.(…)They needed an enemy. So, they first started propaganda against Usamah and Taleban and then this incident happened. You see, the Bush administration approved a budget of 40bn dollars. Where will this huge amount go? It will be provided to the same agencies, which need huge funds and want to exert their importance.(…)Usamah: I have already said that we are not hostile to the United States. We are against the system, which makes other nations slaves of the United States, or forces them to mortgage their political and economic freedom.(…)The Western media is unleashing such a baseless propaganda,
which make us surprise but it reflects on what is in their hearts and gradually they themselves become captive of this propaganda. They become afraid of it and begin to cause harm to themselves. Terror is the most dreaded weapon in modern age and the Western media is mercilessly using it against its own people.

Law-enforcement officials were told that terrorists were building a bomb that was eventually used to blow up the World Trade Center, and they planned to thwart the plotters by secretly substituting harmless powder for the explosives, an informer said after the blast.

The informer was to have helped the plotters build the bomb and supply the fake powder, but the plan was called off by an F.B.I. supervisor who had other ideas about how the informer, Emad A. Salem, should be used, the informer said.

The account, which is given in the transcript of hundreds of hours of tape recordings Mr. Salem secretly made of his talks with law-enforcement agents, portrays the authorities as in a far better position than previously known to foil the Feb. 26 bombing of New York City’s tallest towers. The explosion left six people dead, more than 1,000 injured and damages in excess of half a billion dollars. Four men are now on trial in Manhattan Federal Court in that attack.

It’s increasingly clear that the operation was a planned assassination, multiply violating elementary norms of international law. There appears to have been no attempt to apprehend the unarmed victim, as presumably could have been done by 80 commandos facing virtually no
opposition—except, they claim, from his wife, who lunged towards them.In societies that profess some respect for law, suspects are apprehended and brought to fair trial.I
stress “suspects.” In April 2002, the head of the FBI, Robert Mueller, informed the press that after the most intensive investigation in history, the FBI could say no more than that it “believed” that the plot was hatched in Afghanistan, though implemented in the UAE and Germany.What
they only believed in April 2002, they obviously didn’t know 8 months earlier, when Washington dismissed tentative offers by the Taliban (how serious, we do not know, because they were instantly dismissed) to extradite bin Laden if they were presented with evidence—which, as we soon learned, Washington didn’t have. Thus Obama was simply lying when he said, in his White House statement, that “we quickly learned that the 9/11 attacks were carried out by al Qaeda.”(…)We might ask ourselves how we would be reacting if Iraqi commandos landed at George W. Bush’s compound, assassinated him, and dumped his body in the Atlantic. Uncontroversially, his crimes vastly exceed bin Laden’s, and he is not a “suspect” but uncontroversially the “decider” who gave the orders to commit the “supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole” (quoting the Nuremberg Tribunal) for which Nazi criminals were hanged: the hundreds of thousands of deaths, millions of refugees, destruction of much of the country, the bitter sectarian conflict that has now spread to the rest of the region.(…)Same with the name, Operation Geronimo.The imperial mentality is so profound, throughout western society, that no one can perceive that they are glorifying bin Laden by identifying him with courageous resistance against genocidal invaders. It’s
like naming our murder weapons after victims of our crimes: Apache, Tomahawk… It’s as if the Luftwaffe were to call its fighter planes “Jew” and “Gypsy.”

In late January, I wrote about the Obama administration’s “presidential assassination program,” whereby American
citizens are targeted for killings far away from any battlefield, based exclusively on unchecked accusations by the Executive Branch that they’re involved in Terrorism. At the time, The Washington Post’s Dana Priest had noted deep in a long article that Obama had continued Bush’s policy (which Bush never actually implemented) of having the Joint Chiefs of Staff compile “hit lists” of Americans,
and Priest suggested that the American-born Islamic cleric Anwar
al-Awlaki was on that list. The following week, Obama’s Director of
National Intelligence, Adm.
Dennis Blair, acknowledged in Congressional testimony that the administration reserves the “right” to carry out such assassinations.

Benjamin Ferencz is a 92-year-old naturalized U.S. citizen, American combat soldier during World War II, and a prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials, where he prosecuted numerous Nazi war criminals, including some responsible for the deaths of upward of 100,000 innocent people. He gave a fascinating (and shockingly articulate) 13-minute interview yesterday to the CBC in Canada about the bin Laden killing, the Nuremberg principles, and the U.S. role in the world.(…)All of Ferencz’s answers are thought-provoking — including his discussion of how the Nuremberg Principles apply to bin Laden — but there’s one answer he gave which I particularly want to highlight; it was in response to this question: “so what should we have learned from Nuremberg that we still haven’t learned”? His answer (audio):

I’m afraid most of the lessons of Nuremberg have passed, unfortunately.The world has accepted them, but the U.S. seems reluctant to do so.
The principal lesson we learned from Nuremberg is that a war of aggression — that means, a war in violation of international law, in violation of the UN charter, and not in self-defense — is the supreme international crime, because all the other crimes happen in war. And every
leader who is responsible for planning and perpetrating that crime should be held to account in a court of law, and the law applies equally to everyone.

These lessons were hailed throughout the world — I hailed them, I was involved in them — and it saddens me to no end when Americans are asked: why don’t you support the Nuremberg principles on aggression? And the response
is: Nuremberg? That was then, this is now. Forget it.

Is this what justice looks like? Al-Qaida boss Osama bin Laden was killed on Sunday in a secret military operation in Pakistan. Americans are celebrating, but there are serious doubts about whether the targeted killing was legal under international law and the laws of war.(…)Claus Kress, an international law professor at the University of Cologne, argues that achieving retributive justice for crimes, difficult as that may be, is“not achieved through summary executions, but through a punishment that is meted out at the end of a trial.”Kress says the normal way of handling a man who is sought globally for
commissioning murder would be to arrest him, put him on trial and ultimately convict him.
In the context of international law, military force can be used in the
arrest of a suspect, and this may entail gun fire or situations of
self-defense that, in the end, leave no other possibility than to kill a
highly dangerous and highly suspicious person. These developments can also lead to tragic and inevitable escalations of the justice process. (…)In truth, it isn’t quite that simple. And not everything that the United States declares to be war really is.Legal experts like Kress say it is “questionable whether the USA can still claim to be engaged in an armed conflict with al-Qaida.”(…)And what business did the United States even have acting within the territory of Pakistan, a foreign power? A military strike that crosses national borders, barring acts of self-defense, is generally viewed as an infringement on sovereignty — unless Pakistan’s government requestedhelp from the Americans.

“I think the tighter we get on aviation, we have to also be thinking now about going on to mass transit or to trains or maritime. So, what do we need to be doing to strengthen our protections there?”“The long-term

is, how do we get out of this having to have an ever-increasing security apparatus because of terrorists and a terrorist attack?” she said.“I think having a better understanding of what causes someone to become a terrorist will be helpful.”— Janet Napolitano

“Ever since the continents started interacting politically, some five hundred years ago, Eurasia has been the center of world power.”– (p. xiii) (Eurasia means “the Middle East”)

“… But in the meantime, it is imperative that no Eurasian challenger emerges, capable of dominating Eurasia and thus of also challenging America. The formulation of a comprehensive and integrated Eurasian geostrategy is therefore the purpose of this book.” (p. xiv)

“In that context, how America ‘manages’ Eurasia is critical. A power that dominates Eurasia would control two of the world’s three most advanced and economically productive regions. A mere glance at the map also suggests that control over Eurasia would almost automatically entail Africa’s subordination, rendering the Western Hemisphere and Oceania (Australia) geopoliticallyperipheral to the world’s central continent. About 75 per cent of the world’s people live in Eurasia, and most of the world’s physical wealth is there as well, both in its enterprises and underneath its soil.
Eurasia accounts for about three-fourths of the world’s known energy resources.” (p.31)

These are the very first words in the book: “Ever since the continents started interacting politically, some five hundred years ago, Eurasia has been the center of world power.”– p. xiii. Eurasia is all of the territory east of Germany and Poland, stretching all the way through Russia and China to the Pacific Ocean. It includes the Middle East and
most of the Indian subcontinent. The key to controlling Eurasia, says Brzezinski, is controlling the Central Asian Republics. And the key to controlling the Central Asian republics is Uzbekistan. Thus, it comes as no surprise that Uzbekistan was forcefully mentioned by President George W. Bush in his address to a joint session of Congress, just days after the attacks of September 11, as the very first place that the U.S. military would be deployed.

According to some accounts, Vice President Dick Cheney is in the Presidential Emergency Operations Center (PEOC) below the White House by this time, along with Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta and others. Mineta will recall that, while a suspicious plane is heading toward Washington,an unidentified young man comes in and says to Cheney, “The plane is 50miles out.” Mineta confers with acting FAA Deputy Administrator Monte Belger, who is at the FAA’s Washington headquarters. Belger says to him:“We’re watching this target on the radar, but the transponder’s been turned off. So we have no identification.”According to Mineta, the young man continues updating the vice president, saying, “The plane is 30 miles out,” and when he gets down to “The plane is 10 miles out,” asks, “Do the orders still stand?” In response, Cheney “whipped his neckaround and said, ‘Of course the orders still stand. Have you heard anything to the contrary?’”Mineta will say that, “just by the nature of all the events going on,” he infers that the order being referred to is a shootdown order. Nevertheless, Flight 77 continues on and hits the Pentagon.

Al
Qaeda Doesn’t Exist is the forthcoming documentary by The Corbett
Report. It interrogates the theory that Al Qaeda is a centrally-operated
terrorist organization run by Osama Bin Laden that perpetrated the
attacks of 9/11. The documentary looks at Al Qaeda’s roots, its ties to
western intelligence agencies and the fictions that have been created to
enhance its myth in the corporate-controlled media.